Tuning In: Patriots radio voice Bob Socci ready for biggest call of his career

Thursday

Jan 16, 2014 at 8:36 PMJan 16, 2014 at 10:06 PM

Bill Doyle Tuning In

Most NFL radio broadcasters never have the chance to work a conference championship game.

Bob Socci will call one in his first season as the radio voice of the Patriots when New England visits Denver in the AFC Championship game at 3 p.m. Sunday.

Socci, 46, admits he's usually nervous leading up to every game he calls and he expects this weekend to be no exception.

"This will be the biggest sporting event that I've called to date," Socci said in a interview with the T&G this week, "and it will certainly have the largest listening audience."

For 36 years, Gil Santos called all of the Patriots championship games on radio before retiring after last season. Flagship station 98.5 the Sports Hub hired Socci, the radio voice of Navy football for 16 years, to replace Santos.

"I still consider him the voice of the Patriots," Socci said of Santos, "in a lot of different respects and I think he always will be. He's a Hall of Famer, not just a Hall of Fame broadcaster, he's in the Patriots Hall of Fame."

Socci said Santos gave him the same advice others did — to be himself. Socci lacks Santos' powerful voice, but most broadcasters do. Socci excels at keeping up with the play and he works well with analyst Scott Zolak.

"He's very energetic," Socci said of Zolak, "fun-loving, to put it mildly, and he put me at ease. He made me feel like I belonged on that broadcast team, that I belonged in the NFL. It's helped me overcome some early nervousness just by laughing off the air as much as having a good time on the air."

Zolak's excited rant of "unicorns, show ponies, where's the beef" after Tom Brady found rookie Kenbrell Thompkins for a last-second touchdown to beat New Orleans in October became an internet sensation and remains a hot topic.

On Tuesday morning, Socci was asked about it during an interview with a New Orleans radio station that had just replayed it. The day before, Socci was asked about it when he dropped his daughter Maria off at day care.

"If anybody knows I broadcast the Patriots games, it's inescapable," Socci said. "It's usually the first or second question that I get. 'What's it like working with Zo?' and 'What did he mean by unicorns and show ponies?'"

So what did he mean?

"I have no idea, that's Zolak," he said. Socci insisted that Zolak's approach is genuine, not shtick.

"If I didn't know Scott Zolak, I might think that (it's shtick)," he said, "but Scott's personality is so consistent on air and off air. He's a guy who likes to have a lot of fun. He's a bit of a character and I mean that in a really positive way. He's very emotional, and that was the venting of a lot of pent-up feelings."

Santos' radio calls of Adam Vinatieri's field goals to beat the Raiders in the Snow Bowl and against the Rams to give the Patriots their first Super Bowl victory are etched in the memories of Patriots fans.

"If that moment arises, you don't want to screw it up," Socci said. "You want to have a call that does the moment justice the way Gil did."

Socci has worked some big games at Navy. In 2007, he called Navy's first win over Notre Dame in 43 years, a triple-overtime victory.

After Navy beat Air Force in football in 2003 to win the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy (a competition against Air Force and Army) for the first time since 1981, a Marine Corps captain who had been a Navy football captain told him he had stayed up all night in Iraq listening to the broadcast. But Sunday will be the most important game he has ever called.

"Hopefully, this weekend," he said, "I'm going to just try to have fun with it, try to be prepared as I can, but have fun with it and not think about the magnitude of the moment once it gets started."

In his 12 years of calling Navy basketball games, he worked games at Holy Cross.

"I know the Hart Center well and I know Worcester pretty well," he said.

Socci believes the Patriots' improved running game behind LeGarrette Blount gives them a good chance of following the blueprint the Chargers used to win in Denver during the regular season.

"One of the reasons I don't gamble," he said, "and never really have is I always go with my heart instead of my head, but in this case I think both my heart and my head tell me the Patriots have a shot, a pretty good shot. Obviously, it's a very difficult challenge."

Contact Bill Doyle at wdoyle@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillDoyle15.